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Obama in Afghanistan to sign security pact

Oklahoman
Modified: May 1, 2012 at 2:14 pm •
Published: May 1, 2012

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KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Under intense security and the cover of night, President Barack Obama slipped into Afghanistan on Tuesday to sign an agreement cementing a U.S. commitment to the nation after the long and unpopular war comes to an end.

Obama was to be on the ground for about seven hours in Afghanistan, where the United States has been engaged in war for more than a decade following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The trip carries major symbolic significance for a president seeking a second term and allows him to showcase what the White House considers the fruit of Obama's refocused war effort: the killing a year ago of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Air Force One touched down late at night local time at Bagram Air Field, the main U.S. base here.

Media traveling with Obama on the 13-hour flight had to agree to keep it secret until Obama had safely finished a helicopter flight to the nation's capital, Kabul, where Taliban insurgents still launch lethal attacks.

Obama is joining Afghan President Hamid Karzai to sign the agreement that will broadly govern the U.S. role in Afghanistan after the American combat mission stops at the end of 2014 — 13 years after it began.

Obama will also give a speech designed to reach Americans in the U.S. dinnertime hour of 7:30 p.m. EDT. It will be 4 a.m. here when Obama speaks.

His war address will come exactly one year after special forces, on his order, began the raid that led to the killing of bin Laden in Pakistan.

Since then, ties between the United States and Afghanistan have been tested anew by the burning of Muslim holy books at a U.S. base and the massacre of 17 civilians, including children, allegedly by an American soldier.

Obama's overarching message will be that the war is ending on his watch but the U.S. commitment to its ally is not.

Politics, too, set the tone for what the White House hoped would be a positive message and image for Obama: the commander in chief setting a framework to end the war while reassuring Afghanistan, on its soil, it will not be abandoned.

At home, Obama's Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, has retorted to the Obama campaign's suggestion that Romney might not have gone after bin Laden as Obama did.

"Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order," Romney said of the Democratic president ousted after one term.

Obama has tried to portray inconsistency in Romney's position on the merits of targeting bin Laden. Without mentioning Romney by name, Obama has said he has been consistent and if others have not, "let them explain it."

Obama aides said the anniversary of bin Laden's killing is not a focus of the trip. But they do not mind that Obama's mission will serve as a reminder, six months before Election Day.

More than 1,800 U.S. forces have been killed and 15,700 more have been wounded in Afghanistan.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined have cost almost $1.3 trillion. And public support for keeping troops in Afghanistan seems lower than ever.

Obama has gone twice before to Afghanistan as president, most recently in December 2010, and once to Iraq in 2009.